Colin Woodard

The first shocking thing about Nations Apart, by Colin Woodard is that all the stereotypes Americans use for themselves are accurate. And unchanging. The characterizations (or assassinations) of the Deep South are accurate, and so are the New England Yankee ones, the Far West, the New France of Louisiana and El Norte of Mexican border areas. All true. That’s the premise, and it was unsettling to have to accept that as the basis for any kind of scientific analysis, because they are just show more mean clichés. Or are they?

At first, thoughtful readers will rightly reject the stereotypes as a terrible basis for analysis of the Trump era, because it is basically just name-calling. But Woodard doubles down. Not only are those stereotypes accurate, but they have not changed in 300 years. He shows that groups of founding immigrants, from Deep Southern to Appalachian to intolerant Puritans dominating the northeast not only brought their prejudices with them from England or Scotland or Germany, but they have hung onto them, throughout their expansion into more distant areas of the country. That movement can be followed by their continued prejudices, habits, philosophies, laws and attitudes, right down to today. They continue to show up in studies, polls, and the news.

Accordingly, Woodard has broken up the USA into seven separate nations, where those 300 year-old traits continue to shape party affiliations, poll findings, election results and community positions on essentially everything. They even follow dialects and accents, confirming their existence as nations.

Woodard has been working at this for a long time. He founded Nationhood Lab, which studies the different traits Americans carry. The lab dissects polls and studies, accounting for the slightest weaknesses in their structure, presentation and conclusion. For accuracy’s sake, they only include studies down to the county level, where the influences of various churches can be accounted for. So for example, in a meetingplace state like Ohio, the voting for or against abortion rights can be seen to border on the influence areas of several of these Nations Woodard proposes. That’s how real they are. (See map below)

At numerous points, he exempts nations like Hawaiian and indigenous because their numbers are insufficient to make accurate statements. He is careful about what he says and how he says it – up to a point. But the truth is that nations like Deep South, Greater Appalachia and New France are largely ignorant, self-centered, isolated and failing.

He looks at current issues, all very front and center, like abortion, immigration, guns, climate – the usual suspects. He shows how the locals view them, and how their responses perfectly fit the stereotypes of their nations. It is sadly predictable, with never a hint that that any kind of fact-finding or reporting makes the slightest difference to anyone’s automatic response. Americans’ ideas and ideals are set in cement and nothing will budge them, and have not for 300 years. Only the topics change; the stereotypes predict the results.

A lot of the blame falls on religion, from Catholic to various flavors of Protestant and the evangelicals. It is those churches that determine Americans’ decisions on abortion, for example. And despite 300 years of evolving science and medicine, as well as the waning influence of the Church in general, those ideas remain. “When it comes to abortion,” Woodard says, “religion is destiny.”

Yet farther on, he shows definitively, much as Noam Chomsky always claimed, Americans are far more progressive than their elected representatives. Americans apparently favor abortion in an absolute majority. They don’t want to punish LGBTQ people, have no burning need to destroy transgender people, and so on down a long list of issues. But their elected lawmakers do. And the extreme right and evangelicals in particular, make sure they get the message right: take away all rights from those who don’t fit the WASP patriarchal mold.

The business of ignoring the will of the people has come to the point where the governor of Missouri has singlehandedly repealed a number of laws that the electorate proposed and passed as voting issues in general elections. This is just one symptom of a fascist state Woodard sees forming, and very quickly. The disunity among the seven nations of the USA actually promotes the rise of fascism, he thinks.

Empathy and the common good feature prominently in the differences between these American nations. He describes Greater Appalachia and the Deep South as places where “the common good has few friends.” Guns are more widely owned there, and white suicide rates by firearms lead the country.

The Deep South remains stubbornly and proudly poor and backward. Woodard says: “(T)he reason they’re poor is precisely because they’re aggressively individualistic, with centuries of underinvestment in their people, their institutions and infrastructure, a choice made by generations of elites so that they would have low taxes, cheap labor and uncontested political control […] If laissez-faire economics was a panacea, the Deep South would be the wealthiest region in the country and Honduras would be among the world’s wealthiest nations. If high taxes and expansive services were destructive to economic performance, New Netherland, Yankeedom and the Left Coast would be the country’s poorest regions and Scandinavia the world’s worst. It’s just not the case.”

This book was completed at the top of the year, just before Trump resumed office, and Woodard makes all kinds of predictions about this regime, all of which have come true. He cites Robert Paxton’s famous list of nine points for the traits of fascism, and they fit the MAGA ethos to a tee. Woodard says Trump and Trumpism tick every one of scholars’ boxes defining fascism.

The best performances economically and socially in the USA can be seen in Yankeedom and Left Coast, where people reject individual solo efforts in favor of community and team-oriented solutions. These areas are richer, more highly educated, healthier, and longer-lived. This matches the Red-Bad, Blue-Good analysis I reviewed in 2023’s State of Neglect, by far my most widely viewed review on Medium. ( https://medium.com/the-straight-dope/red-states-much-worse-than-you-think-and-th... ) . That book showed how far down the scale Red states are, in virtually every category from longevity to education, wealth, income and community-building. Woodard’s book is a historically consistent yet significantly different way of looking at Americans across state lines, calling their geographic areas whole nations of likeminded people instead.

One unsatisfying thing about Nations Apart is that Woodard never tries to explain how it is even possible that 300 year-old prejudices remain unchanged, despite history, community, intermarriage, changes in society, laws, education and changed circumstances. How will anything ever evolve if apparently nothing can shake the 300 year old prejudices of 2025 Americans, no matter where or how they live now?

There are plenty of other questions unanswered too. Why is it that the French in Canada are so open minded and communitarian, but the French in New France (former Acadians from the Maritimes) of the southern USA are such loners? How does that work with unchanging values over 300 years? How does that jibe with where they are today? That it does not matter what you propose; Americans are locked into preset attitudes, and no amount of campaigning will see them vote against those principles.

It is precisely because he does not examine those fundamental issues that his Conclusion isn’t worth anything. Woodard’s Nationhood Lab posed pairs of statements to thousands of Americans, looking for ones that resonated. The idea was to find what Americans really want, and give it to them in political talking points, slogans, platform planks and so on. But if Americans are this rigid, how will any of it break through the closed minds?

His own lab studies show that essentially every new statement was rejected by Republicans and their subset of Evangelical Protestants. And even if “only” 28% of the electorate is registered as Republican, Woodard has still not found the words to appeal to them. They want their cult, their cult leader, a thrashing of the constitution, the supremacy of WASPs, the subjugation of women and will believe all the lies their cult spouts daily. What they will not stand for is that there are better ways to live and to relate to their fellow Americans.

But worst of all, this analysis means no one in the country is going to adapt or change their mind. That is damning. It’s been 300 years now, so don’t expect any sudden change of heart or mind. Americans will not clamor for better management by Democrats in 2028 (if there is an election at all). Talking sense to the other side is clearly pointless. Facts carry no weight. As Woodard accidently proved in his attempts to find inspiring messaging, everyone cannot relate to them; there is no common ground in the USA. None.

From the looks of it, the USA has little choice but to split into these seven separate nations, where citizen rights differ in each one. To be an American will have no meaning any more. Despite Woodard’s hopeful efforts to find unifying messages, several of these nations will only be satisfied with fascism and no civil rights. Even Woodard has to admit “the single-minded pursuit of individual freedom is driving us to the brink of despotism.”

Civil war will result if they all don’t get everything they want right away. New England states will want to join a saner Canada, and so might Left Coast portions. No one will want The Deep South as a partner, but that’s okay; The Deep South wants to go it alone anyway.

This is not the future Trump envisioned, but it is the one he is fomenting.

David Wineberg show less

It is a great read to see the history of this country that certainly explains some of what we see going on here today in this difficult moment. I do question the history writing norms though that report on cultural details and symptoms of difference as if they alone are explanations for the way history plays out. It is clear the youth movements of the Midlands, Yankeedom, and Left Coast had to be stopped. The progress they established laid the ground work for perhaps the most energetic, show more creative, and economically accomplished generation ever on earth. They created a lot of middle class wealth and middle class political power wherein lies the real reason behind the story here. Like the Moors and Jews of Spain in another golden age, or the Amsterdam middle class who came after them, with other enlightenment moments like Prague in Bohemia, they had to be stopped by a Reactionary Royalist Putsch! Elizabeth I of England is well documented for her plots to dampen the scary wealth and political power of her woollen makers by importing waves of French Huguenot linen-makers as competition from a civil war she actually funded. Using the ends against the center is perhaps one of the most masterful Machiavellian strategies. Pitting strategies are de rigeur in Oligarchy and Empire. That they go so undetected by history writers in 21st Century USA is just mah-veh-lous for the descendents of the Oligarchs!

The mysteries embedded in this book can be fun reading for hapless Americans with a lot of family history they never really knew. In the wrong hands it can be the playbook for divide-and-rule and the dismantling of the Republic, never a moment too late! The market for natural resources still buried under public and private lands here is just now hotting up for the century to come!

These details can also explain the very explicit efforts to engineer culture war in this country since the 1970s. Ralph Reed admits his goals of divide-and-rule using conservative Christianity in the Appalachia/Midlander/Deep South/Far West nations. He details the techniques he used for his bosses to get Roman Catholic blue collar workers throughout the Midlander region to vote with the Plutocrats as if they suddenly shared some profound common interests.

These efforts are explicit. They are no accident. They are real tools of war. Scholars write about these things including how NATO uses them on enemy populations to topple enemy Plutocrats. Mr. Woodard doesn't mention any of this at all, but instead seems to suggest a foregone conclusion that culture war would naturally arise here simply because the people were different. If there weren't economic shortages of work and inadequate resources for decent life and retirement caused by legalized hoarding in the first instance, there would be no reason for culture war to erupt between these nations. The Robert Morris tricks with money are great. But, the remaining tricks over the last century with money to trigger all this stuff like what is going on here today remain hardly mentioned, and certainly not as root causes of simmering tensions.

Mr. Woodard clearly shows that the Aristocratic Authoritarian South has spread its influence over the rest of the country. Plutos everywhere beyond the South must recognize the usefulness of these methods, once they too got hands on astronomical fortunes to protect from the "mob". It is clear some Michigan, Ohio, Omaha, Southwestern PA, CT, TX, etc., along with Wall Street (New Netherland) Plutocrats of course, now all recognize the usefulness of these Deep South strategies. The Courts went along with it too approving such game changing legislation as FEC 1974, and rulings like Buckley vs Valeo and now Citizens United.

This knowledge in the wrong hands can also perhaps explain the combination of international and local home grown (made here) capital backing media enterprises operating in the central regions like News Corporation, Clearchannel, or Community First Newspapers Holdings, Inc. who purvey dubious media and news products for certain ends. Culture war is right up there with disinformation and misdirection in the list of NATO approved and used information warfare practices. It looks like these techniques have been waged right here on us to exploit long understood from the very beginning differences Mr. Woodard so carefully now elucidates for us.

He cites the Southern Planters using religion and denial of schools to control poor whites throughout the region, but doesn't take it a step further to the current times. I wonder why this is. Aristocrats in Europe always used religion, denying education, and even degrading economic and social life to pit against each other, control and manipulate their subject peoples. Bismarck waged "kulturkampf" against Catholic small holding village based farm communities to drive them off the land and into city slums for factory work in the "industrial miracle". This is the same thing happening to villagers in Africa today driving them off ancestral lands into new Chinese and Western financed mining enterprises. The same things are happening here now, and they are not happening simply because cultural differences exist. They are actively exploited. Woodard mentions the front of camera preachers Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, and Jimmy Bakker et al, but not Lewis Powell, nor the money funds that made those TV networks and continue to do so in other incarnations.

It is clear Aristocratic methods emanating from the Authoritarian South are achieving similar social engineering against us today. Richmond VA lawyer Lewis Powell's famous memo reflects this insidious plot to take control over many institutions including education and publishing. The Supreme Court enabled it all of course agreeing every step of the way. The scary thing is that British money has always been a big player in natural resources in this country, along with Saudi money. While BP is clearly an international Anglo-American owned affair, the impunity they've enjoyed from their Gulf Spill shows what they've together achieved in the US over the last 30 years exploiting regional differences here just like their great-grandfathers did everywhere else in the world their money once dominated.

Perhaps Mr Woodard's most revealing remark was the one about the Southern Authoritarians accepting universal suffrage when it finally happened to them. "They didn't mind poor whites voting as long as they voted for who they were supposed to." This kind of explains the two-party system we have here today where private business interests fund both party committees more or less equally. It is funny though that Mr. Woodard suggests that one day "the nation's leaders will betray their oath to uphold the US Constitution". Most critics of the US today at home and around the world contend that the constitution has not been upheld for quite some time! That is if representative government as a basic right really is part of the constitution. FEC 1974 certainly seemed like the beginning of a long slide into this Authoritarian abyss. And, "the incarceration of the Supreme Court justices" hardly seems necessary when they have complied with the needs of Authoritarian Aristocrats from home and abroad throughout this long slide.

The part about "inviting meddling from imperial powers overseas" also seems funny considering the capital structure of News Corporation, and now SuperPACs flooding our elections with legal foreign corporate money for attack ads carefully constructed to play off these regional cultural differences, that goes without saying, that is what Machiavellianism is, but also even deeper psychological patterns in individuals.

I do recommend the book. It is very insightful about our culture and full of useful history for any of us with deep roots in this country. However, US history writers had better change their norms and report what manipulation is really going on behind the symptoms. Machiavelli wrote the textbook to exploit cultural differences. The Southern Aristocrats already knew that with their Jim Crow culture they maintained for so long. The British Aristocrats knew how to play it for 300 years around the world to their advantage. The little border disputes between CT and PA, and VA and PA, and VA and MD are also evidence they knew what they were doing with their latitude based land grants. That the rest of them now know it and remain free to practice it on us is the real story here.

This book and most others like it have a long way to go in explaining cause and effect. I agree that the place could fall into violence between all these peoples described in this book. But, that will get funded to be a coverup for what really happened here! show less

This one tells the story of the Golden Age of Piracy through the lives of Henry Avery, Samuel Bellamy, Edward Thatch (Teach), Charles Vane, Benjamin Hornigold, Henry Jennings and - infamous pirate hunter - Woodes Rogers. Rogers came from a prominent slave-trading family, but was intimately familiar with the dangers of seafaring. What makes this microcosm of history so interesting is that all their lives overlapped. Woodes and Thatch may have been acquainted as kids, Vane briefly joined show more Bellamy, Hornigold was Thatch's mentor, and Bellamy swindled Jennings to join Hornigold. Ultimately it was the unstoppable trio of Bellamy, Hornigold and Thatch who created the perfect base in the Bahamas, calling themselves The Flying Gang. It became a haven not just for pirates, but also for runaway slaves, free mulattos, poor farmers and sailors, and those just looking to escape. Even John and Anne Bonny made their way to this unlawful island paradise!

Action packed but the only reason it got 4/5⭐ is because the "Republic" itself arrived so late in the book - the end of Ch. 5. It opens with Henry Avery, who I understand was an important part of the history of Nassau, but he died long before these events. I wanted more of William Dampier, a cohort of Avery, who had a much bigger role in Roger's early privateering schemes and rise to prominence. Thatch, starting to go by Blackbeard, takes a backseat to Bellamy's stardom, despite being a co-founder. Be prepared for a lot of backstory before all the pirates begin to gather and set up for the great showdown. But Woodard successfully explains why the Golden Age emerged when it did, describes life aboard a naval vs pirate vessel, and the politics of pirate hunting through Rogers. Overall, this one succeeded where Under the Black Flag did not and was thoroughly enjoyable! show less

I'm a Massachusetts resident who has been going to Maine to visit relatives and friends since I was a kid, so in many ways, I'm the ideal audience for this book. Woodard pits Massachusetts and Maine against each other, as four-hundred-year-old warring (sometimes literally) nations.

This is the second Woodard book I've read (and likely far from the last, looking at the rest of his line up.) I can't recommend his 2011 "American Nations" highly enough. The subtitle aptly describes the subject show more area: "a history of the eleven rival regional cultures of North America." As a Mainer looking at history and regional cultural difference, "The Lobster Coast" was essentially the pilot version of the more fleshed-out thesis of 2011. As a New Englander myself, I've been very excited to finally get around to reading "The Lobster Coast."

The book is superbly readable. I finished it in about a week. It begins with a few hands-on cultural portraits of Maine at the turn of the millennium (when the book was written). It then goes through the history over the last 400 years (briefly touching on the geological and Native American histories from the past few thousand years). It then concludes with a summary of current-day suburban sprawl, and a restatement of the ongoing tensions within the state.

I would love to hear an update on the Native American aspects of this history—for example, it seems like Woodard hadn't yet fully integrated the research of Charles Mann's 2005 "1491," (which is understandable, as it hadn't yet been published).

Contrary to popular belief, Plymouth and Jamestown were not the only early Brittish North American settlements: Popham, Maine was another settlement, established in 1607. One of the reasons we don't hear about it much is because it only lasted fourteen months. This kind of volatility is a repeating theme in Maine's history; the past four-hundred years have been a time of strife, famine, and migration. I won't articulate all of the ups and downs here, but the book is worth reading just as a record of all that Maine has been through.

All of this leads us to the core tension that Maine has faced. Starting about 300 years ago, Scotch-Irish asylum seekers became the primary settlers of Maine, and many towns and villages along the Maine coast are still named after them today. These people were farmers and fisherman, and prioritized long-term community stability. One example of this were the laws in the middle of the eighteen hundreds in Maine regarding shipping vessels. Each ship was required by law to split revenues according to the contributions of its crew. This lead to both an extremely equitable pay scale across all fishermen in the state, and also lead to a high degree of equity regarding boat ownership. Unfortunately, these laws came to end after the Civil War, but they were reflective of the kind of values shared by a certain set of Mainers.

On the other hand, we have Massachusetts, which has been a key antagonist in the plot of Maine's history. Up until 1820, Maine was even a territory of Massachusetts. This didn't sit well with Mainers, but did mean that a lot of Massachusetts-aligned individuals played a key role in the economics of Maine—from being a key market for Maine's fishing industry, to now being a key population of property-owning summertime beachgoers.

There's a poignant moment when one of these Scotch-Irish descendants walks into the new McDonalds and is greeted by a photo of her recently deceased father on the wall. She is horrified by this cultural appropriation. Understanding these kinds of dynamics goes a long ways towards understanding the animosity between various American Nations in recent electoral cycles.

This book is dominantly about the Maine coast, and touches very little on Maine's interior (New England's largest state, by acreage). This is likely because there has just been a lot more to talk about on the coast. That said, I'd be fascinated to learn more about the history of Maine's interior (one intriguing fact I learned recently is that, during the Cold War, Aroostook County was home to the US' largest air force base, although it was closed when the war ended).

If you love Maine and love cultural histories, this is the book for you! show less